1939 Cleveland Plain Dealer Articles - Part 1
The first extensive publicity of the newly-formed AA Fellowship.
These articles are reprinted from the Cleveland Plain Dealer with
permission The Elrick B. Davis Articles From The Cleveland Plain Dealer
October - November 1939
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These articles appeared in the main Cleveland newspaper, the Plain
Dealer, just five months after the first A.A. group was formed in
Cleveland. The articles resulted in hundreds of calls for help from
suffering alcoholics who reached out for the hope that the fledgling
Alcoholics Anonymous offered.
The thirteen reliable members of the Cleveland group handled as many as
500 calls in the first month following the appearance of Davis' articles.
The following year Cleveland could boast 20 to 30 groups with hundreds of
members.
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October 21, 1939, Alcoholics Anonymous Makes Its Stand Here - Part 1
October 23, 1939, Alcoholics Anonymous Makes Its Stand Here - Part 2
October 24, 1939, Alcoholics Anonymous Makes Its Stand Here - Part 3
October 25, 1939, Alcoholics Anonymous Makes Its Stand Here - Part 4
October 26, 1939, Alcoholics Anonymous Makes Its Stand Here - Part 5
November 2, 1939, A Noted Divine Reviews "Alcoholics Anonymous"
November 4, 1939, A Physician Looks Upon Alcoholics Anonymous
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Reprinted from the October 21, 1939 Cleveland Plain Dealer with permission
Alcoholics Anonymous Makes Its Stand Here
Part 1
By Elrick B. Davis
Much has been written about Alcoholics Anonymous, an organization doing
major work in reclaiming the habitual drinker. This is the first of a
series describing the work the group is doing in Cleveland.
Success
By now it is a rare Clevelander who does not know, or know of, at least
one man or woman of high talent whose drinking had become a public
scandal, and who suddenly has straightened out "over night," as the
saying goes-the liquor habit licked. Men who have lost $15,000 a year
jobs have them back again. Drunks who have taken every "cure" available
to the most lavish purse, only to take them over again with equally
spectacular lack of success, suddenly have become total abstainers,
apparently without anything to account for their reform. Yet something
must account for the seeming miracle. Something does.
Alcoholics Anonymous has reached the town.
Fellowship
Every Thursday evening at the home of some ex-drunk in Cleveland, 40 or
50 former hopeless rummies meet for a social evening during which they
buck each other up. Nearly every Saturday evening they and their families
have a party — just as gay as any other party held that evening
despite the fact that there is nothing alcoholic to drink. From time to
time they have a picnic, where everyone has a roaring good time without
the aid of even one bottle of beer. Yet these are men and women who,
until recently, had scarcely been sober a day for years, and members of
their families who all that time had been emotionally distraught, social
and economic victims of another's addiction.
These ex-rummies, as they call themselves, suddenly salvaged from the
most socially noisome of fates, are the members of the Cleveland
Fellowship of an informal society called "Alcoholics Anonymous." Who they
are cannot be told, because the name means exactly what it says. But any
incurable alcoholic who really wants to be cured will find the members of
the Cleveland chapter eager to help.
The society maintains a "blind" address: The Alcoholic Foundation, Box
657, Church Street Annex Postoffice, New York City. Inquiries made there
are forwarded to a Cleveland banker, who is head of the local Fellowship,
or to a former big league ball player who is recruiting officer of the
Akron Fellowship, which meets Wednesday evenings in a mansion loaned for
the purpose by a non-alcoholic supporter of the movement.
Cured
The basic point about Alcoholics Anonymous is that it is a fellowship of
"cured" alcoholics. And that both old-line medicine and modern psychiatry
had agreed on the one point that no alcoholic could be cured. Repeat the
astounding fact:
These are cured.
They have cured each other.
They have done it by adopting, with each other's aid, what they call "a
spiritual way of life."
"Incurable" alcoholism is not a moral vice. It is a disease. No
dipsomaniac drinks because he wants to. He drinks because he can't help
drinking.
He will drink when he had rather die than take a drink. That is why so
many alcoholics die as suicides. He will get drunk on the way home from
the hospital or sanitarium that has just discharged him as "cured." He
will get drunk at the wake of a friend who died of drink. He will swear
off for a year, and suddenly find himself half-seas over, well into
another "bust." He will get drunk at the gates of an insane asylum where
he has just visited an old friend, hopeless victim of "wet brain."
Prayer
These are the alcoholics that "Alcoholics Anonymous" cures. Cure is
impossible until the victim is convinced that nothing that he or a "cure"
hospital can do, can help. He must know that his disease is fatal. He
must be convinced that he is hopelessly sick of body, and of mind —
and of soul. He must be eager to accept help from any source — even
God.
Alcoholics Anonymous has a simple explanation for an alcoholic's physical
disease. It was provided them by the head of one of New York City's
oldest and most famous "cure" sanitariums. The alcoholic is allergic to
alcohol. One drink sets up a poisonous craving that only more of the
poison can assuage. That is why after the first drink the alcoholic
cannot stop.
They have a psychiatric theory equally simple and convincing. Only an
alcoholic can understand another alcoholic's mental processes and state.
And they have an equally simple, if unorthodox, conception of God.
Contact:
The Legacy Group of Alcoholics Anonymous © 2005